JP2003196130A - File management device and computer program - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve the complicatedness in the classification and management of a large quantity of files by contents. <P>SOLUTION: An analytic processing part 22 analyses the structure of an accumulated file. A generation processing part 24 XML-converts the accumulated file to reflect the result of the analysis, and an importance determining part 60 determines the importance of each factor of the accumulated file. A mark giving part 62 gives a mark to the factor determined important to reflect it to the XML-converted accumulated file, and a summary forming part 64 forms a summary while eliminating the unnecessary factors. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2003,JPO

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a file management technique. The present invention particularly relates to a technique for efficiently managing a large number of files in a form that facilitates searching.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, a PC (personal computer)
With the spread of, all documents are being digitized. Files are created electronically using document creation software such as a word processor, and these are stored in the hard disk. In an enterprise environment, computers are often connected to each other via a network, and a large number of document files are often shared by multiple users. Now that the Internet has spread, the amount of data received from outside such as web pages and emails is increasing. A predetermined administrator may classify the files in advance so that anyone can search for a desired file from such a large number of files.

[0003]

As a method of classifying a plurality of files, there is a method of grouping according to the contents of the files and storing each in a separate folder. However, it is not only difficult to uniquely define a group of files, but even if a large number of files are classified in advance by a particular administrator, the criteria for classification depend on the subjectivity of the administrator, making it difficult to search. In some cases. Thus, it is not uncommon for valuable material to remain asleep without being reused because it is both difficult to manage and retrieve.

On the other hand, some files shared by a plurality of users have a high utility value for many users, and some have a utility value for only a few users in the first place. It also includes those that are frequently reused and those that are not. Therefore, it is likely that most of the large number of files will not be needed by each user. Classification of files by type in a state where such files are mixed does not necessarily lead to easy search. If you can easily find only the files that are really useful, many users will be able to work more efficiently.

The present inventor has made the present invention based on the above recognition, and an object thereof is to provide a technique for managing a large number of files by a highly convenient method.

[0006]

One aspect of the present invention relates to a file management device. This device is a device that manages a plurality of files that are electronically recorded so that they can be used by a computer, and a structure analysis unit that analyzes the structure of a file and whether the structure is characteristic as a result of the analysis. An importance determining unit that determines whether the structure of the file is characteristic by the importance determining unit, and a mark assigning unit that indicates that the structure is characteristic by a predetermined mark and associates it with the file. including.

The "plurality of files" are a group of files to be created later, and it is not necessary to perform special management for creating the abstract. Further, the file mentioned here is assumed to be text data such as a document file, but is not limited to this, and may be image data or audio data, or may be configured by any combination thereof. .

In analyzing the file structure, known techniques such as syntax analysis, semantic analysis and layout analysis may be used. The "structure is characteristic" can be assumed to include a large amount of image data or a large amount of audio data, but is not limited to this.

Another aspect of the present invention also relates to a file management device. This device is a device that manages a plurality of electronically recorded files that can be used by a computer, and a structure analysis unit that decomposes a file into elements and whether or not each decomposed element is characteristic of the file. An importance degree determining unit that determines whether or not the element and a mark assigning unit that assigns a predetermined mark to the element determined to be characteristic by the importance degree determining unit so that the element is revealed in the file.

Morphological analysis can be assumed here as a method of decomposing a file into elements, but the invention is not limited to this.
Naturally, the methods such as the above-mentioned syntax analysis, semantic analysis, layout analysis, etc. may be combined. Further, a plurality of marks may be given, and in general, the "characteristic degree" of the element is expressed in several stages such as "1, 2, 3". Moreover, the attribute of the element may be used for the mark. For example, when a certain element is analyzed as a "proper noun" by morphological analysis, the mark "proper noun" is given to the element.

Further, the importance determining section may detect the position of the element appearing in the file, and refer to the position to determine whether or not the element is characteristic. For example, assuming that this device is applied to a certain document file, and the title is described in that file, the words contained in the title are often keywords, so
Such words are determined to be characteristic.

Further, the importance degree judging section judges whether or not the element is characteristic by comparing the frequency of appearance of the element in the file with the frequency of appearance of the element in another file. Good. For example, a word that appears a certain number of times in the file is determined to be characteristic. Further, for example, other files managed in the same device are referred to, the appearance frequencies of elements that should be judged as to whether they are characteristic or not are compared, and the one with the highest appearance frequency among other files is judged to be characteristic. Or, conversely, it is judged to be general rather than characteristic. There are many criteria for this determination, and generally, a user who uses this device sets the criteria as appropriate.

Further, it may further include an object to which a mark is added and an index storage section for recording a combination of the mark as an index. For example, a table showing the correspondence between the marked elements and their appearance frequencies can be assumed, but the invention is not limited to this.

Further, the index storage section may extract the object determined to be characteristic by the importance degree determination section, omit the object determined to be not characteristic, and compress the file to create an index. In the file, delete the elements that are determined to be uncharacteristic, that is, not important.
The file summary may then be indexed. Naturally, at this time, make sure that the text is formatted,
Techniques such as the above morphological analysis and syntactic analysis are used.

Further, the index storage unit may determine the degree of compression at the time of creating the index of the file according to the storable remaining capacity of the storage medium in which the created index is to be stored. In addition, the index storage unit gives an instruction regarding the degree of compression when creating an index of a file,
For example, "Set file size to 30%" or "200
An instruction such as “within words” may be received from the user.

Further, an update checking section for checking the update history of the file may be included, and the index storage section may re-create the index of the file when the update of the file is confirmed.

Any combination of the above components,
It is also effective as an aspect of the present invention that the components and expressions of the present invention are mutually replaced among methods, devices, systems, computer programs, recording media storing computer programs, and the like.

[0018]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION (Prerequisite Technology) A file search device according to this prerequisite technology searches a plurality of files for a file similar to a sentence designated by a user as a search condition. As a result, it becomes easy to search for files without classifying the files according to the contents in advance, and the burden of managing a large number of files is reduced.

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing the configuration of a file search device in the base technology. The file search device 10 includes a processing unit 20 that performs a process required to generate index data that is referred to when a desired file is searched from a plurality of files, and a search process that performs a search process based on a condition designated by a user. The unit 30 and a plurality of files to be searched (hereinafter referred to as "accumulation files")
Holding unit 40 for holding data necessary for search processing
And an input / output processing unit 50 that processes input / output of data between this device and the outside.

The file search device 10 can be realized by hardware such as a CPU and a memory of a computer, and can be realized by software such as a program having a file management or file search function. It depicts the functional blocks that are realized through these collaborations. Therefore, these functional blocks can be realized in various ways depending on the combination of hardware and software.

The processing unit 20 processes a plurality of accumulated files held by the holding unit 40 and extracts a plurality of characteristic character strings from each of them. The plurality of characteristic character strings form a concept (concept) that briefly shows the contents of the storage file, and the concept is recorded as index data. The processing unit 20 includes an analysis processing unit 22 that linguistically analyzes a character string included in the accumulated file, and a generation processing unit 24 that generates index data based on the analysis result.

The analysis processing section 22 includes a preprocessing section 26 and a character string extraction section 27. The preprocessing unit 26 performs preprocessing prior to language analysis. For example, a file format or a document format may be detected from the storage file to be processed, and the storage file may be converted into an atypical format such as a text format based on the file format or the document format to form an easily analyzed state. One storage file may be divided into a plurality of blocks to form a state suitable for analysis. At this time, morphological analysis, syntactic analysis,
A technique such as semantic analysis may be used.

The character string extraction unit 27 extracts a plurality of character strings from the storage file to be processed. The words included in a word dictionary described later may be extracted, or a character string delimited by spaces or blanks may be recognized as a word.

The generation processing unit 24 includes a statistical processing unit 28 and an index generation unit 29. The statistical processing unit 28 counts the appearance frequency of the extracted character string in the storage file and also the appearance frequency of the character string in all the plurality of storage files held by the file storage unit 42. At this time, the similarity between the character strings is considered. For example, synonyms,
The appearance frequency of a character string is counted by absorbing the difference between a plurality of words defined as synonyms and controlled words and having similar meanings.

The index generator 29 generates index data based on the appearance frequency of the character string counted by the statistical processor 28. This index data is configured as a list in which weights are added to the extracted plurality of character strings according to their respective appearance frequencies. As for the weighting for each character string, the character string having a higher application frequency in the storage file to be processed is set to have a higher weighting, while the character string having a high appearance frequency over all the plurality of storage files held by the file storage unit 42 is set. Lower the weight. As a result, the character string unique to the accumulated file can be revealed by a statistical method. When each accumulated file is divided into a plurality of blocks by the preprocessing unit 26, index data is generated for each block.

The holding unit 40 includes a file storage unit 4
2, an index storage unit 44, a dictionary storage unit 46, and a related data storage unit 48. The file storage unit 42 holds a plurality of accumulated files. For example, a document file generated by document creation software such as a word processor, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) or XML.
It includes files in various formats, such as files generated using a description language such as (eXtensible Markup Language), and the contents thereof need not necessarily be sentences. Further, the accumulated file itself does not need to be classified and standardized in advance for retrieval.

The index storage unit 44 holds the index data generated by the processing unit 20 in a form associated with the storage file. The dictionary storage unit 46 is a word dictionary,
Data such as a synonym dictionary, a synonym dictionary, and a controlled word dictionary that are referred to in the language analysis and statistical processing by the processing unit 20 are held. The related data storage unit 48 holds data that is optionally used in the processing by the search unit 30. For example, it holds a related dictionary that is referred to in order to replace a word specified as a search condition with a word of a superordinate concept, a word of a subordinate concept, a word having relevance, or the like. Such data may be generated by the processing unit 20 by extracting it from the accumulated file.

The search unit 30 receives a search condition from the user and extracts a storage file matching the search condition from the file storage unit 42. The search unit 30 includes a comparison processing unit 32 that compares the search condition with the index data, and a result processing unit 34 that presents to the user an accumulation file that matches the search condition based on the comparison result.

The comparison processing section 32 includes a condition setting section 36 and a similarity determination section 37. The condition setting unit 36 acquires the search condition from the user. This search condition may be in the form of a sentence described by a natural sentence or in the form of a file containing some character string. The search condition is sent to the processing unit 20 and is subjected to the same processing as the above-described index data generation process, and the concept of the search condition is generated.

The similarity determination unit 37 detects the similarity between the search condition and the accumulated file by comparing the concept of the search condition and the concepts recorded as index data. At the time of comparison, based on various dictionaries stored in the dictionary storage unit 46 or the related data storage unit 48, another character string related to the character string included in the search condition may be added to complement the search condition. .

Here, a vector space model is used to compare the search condition with the index data. That is, the concept of search conditions and the concept of index data are expressed as vectors in a multidimensional space, and these are compared. When the concept includes n character strings, an n-dimensional vector space is formed and each component is weighted according to the appearance frequency of each character string. The degree of approximation between the vectors thus formed is the degree of similarity between the search condition and the accumulated file.

The result processing section 34 includes a list generation section 38 and a display processing section 39. The list generation unit 38 generates a list of accumulated files in descending order of similarity. At this time, the number of stored files included in the list may be adjusted to an appropriate number.

The display processing unit 39 displays a list of accumulated files as a search result on the screen. The list of accumulated files may consist of file names and a summary of their contents.

The input / output processing unit 50 is used by the file search device 1
This is an interface for inputting and outputting data between the file search device 10 and the outside thereof, such as various processing instructions for 0, input of search conditions, output of search results, and the like. When the file search device 10 is realized as a stand-alone, it serves as an interface connecting a user and this device, and when the file search device 10 is realized as a network server, communication for connecting this device with a client terminal via a network. Become an interface.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing the index data generation process in the base technology. First, a storage file to be processed is set from a plurality of files (S1
0), preprocesses the accumulated file (S12), and extracts a character string from the accumulated file by a process such as morphological analysis (S14). Statistical data such as the appearance frequency is calculated for each extracted character string (S16), and index data is generated based on this (S18). The storage file that has not been generated as index data is the file storage unit 42.
If the remaining files remain (S20Y), the remaining files are subjected to the processes of S10 to S18, and this is repeated until all the accumulated files are processed (S20).

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing the search process in the base technology. First, when the user specifies a sentence as a search condition in the form of a natural sentence (S30), the processing unit 20 extracts a character string from the search condition and generates index data (S32). The index data and the index storage unit 4
4 compares a plurality of index data held therein to determine the degree of similarity (S34), generates a list of accumulated files in the order of the degree of similarity (S36), and displays this as a search result on the screen (S38). ).

In comparison with the above base technology,
An embodiment will be described. In addition, the same names and reference numerals are given to the functional blocks having the same functions as the functional blocks included in the base technology, and the description thereof will be appropriately omitted.

(Embodiment) In the present embodiment, an index file which is easy for a user to use when searching for a file is created. In particular, the abstract is used as the index file. When creating a summary of a file, the structure of the file is analyzed, and as a result, the "characteristic" degree is represented by an attribute of importance and added as a mark to a portion determined to be characteristic. Then, a summary is created with the added marks as clues. In the following description, by converting the file that is the target of the summary creation into the XML format, it becomes easy to reveal the attributes such as the analysis result of the file structure and the importance in the file.

FIG. 4 is a functional block diagram showing the overall configuration of the search system 130 including the file management server 120 according to the embodiment. In the search system 130,
The file management server 120 is connected to the plurality of user terminals 122 via the network 124. The file management server 120 holds a plurality of storage files such as business documents shared by a plurality of users in business. When the user operates or searches the accumulated file on the file management server 120, the user terminal 122 issues the instruction to the file management server 120. The user terminal 122 is an information processing device such as a PC. The network 124 is, for example, a LAN (Local) installed in a company.
Area Network).

FIG. 5 is a functional block diagram showing the configuration of the file management server 120. File management server 12
0 has a processing unit 20, a search unit 30, a holding unit 40, and an input / output processing unit 50. The input / output processing unit 50 transmits / receives data to / from the user terminal 122 via the network 124.

The processing unit 20 has an analysis processing unit 22 and a generation processing unit 24 having the same configuration as the base technology, an importance degree determination unit 60 having a configuration unique to this embodiment, a mark giving unit 62, and a summary. The creating unit 64 and the update monitoring unit 100 are included.

The importance determining section 60 determines whether or not the elements forming the file are characteristic, based on the results of the processing in the analysis processing section 22 and the generation processing section 24. The mark assigning unit 62 assigns a mark indicating the degree of “characteristic” to the element determined to be characteristic by the importance degree determining unit 60 as the degree of importance. The degrees of importance may be weighted, that is, the marks may be given by dividing the degrees of importance into several levels.

The abstract creating unit 64 creates an abstract of the target file by leaving the elements determined to be characteristic and deleting other elements as appropriate. Summary creation unit 64
Further includes a size determiner 68, which determines the size of the digest to be created. The size determination unit 68 may accept an instruction of the size of the abstract from the user, for example, "within 100 characters", or depending on the available remaining capacity of the recording medium in which the created abstract is stored, for example, the hard disk. May determine the size of the summary.

The update monitoring unit 100 includes a file storage unit 42.
Is monitored, and if there is an update in the file that is held in the file and is subject to the digest creation, the analysis processing unit 22, the generation processing unit 24, the importance determination unit 60, the mark assigning unit 62, the abstract are created so that the digest is created again. It instructs the creating unit 64 to perform the above-mentioned processing.

The holding unit 40 has a file storage unit 42, an index storage unit 44, a dictionary storage unit 46, and a related data storage unit 48 which have the same configuration as the base technology, and a summary storage which is a configuration unique to this embodiment. Including part 66. The summary storage unit 66 records and holds the summary created by the summary creating unit 64.

The search unit 30 has a comparison processing unit 32 having the same configuration as the base technology, and a search result obtained by the user terminal 1
22 includes a result presentation unit 112 to present to 22.

FIG. 6 shows the procedure for creating an abstract with the above configuration.
It will be described based on the flowchart shown in FIG. First, the analysis processing unit 22 analyzes the structure of the accumulated file using a method such as morphological analysis, layout analysis, and syntax analysis (S).
100). Next, the generation processing unit 24 stores the accumulated file in XML.
The result of the analysis is converted and reflected (S102). Subsequently, the importance determination unit 60 determines the importance of each element of the converted accumulated file (S104). There are many criteria such as the frequency and position of appearance in a file, the name of a part of speech, and a combination thereof. As shown in FIG. 8, the mark assigning unit 62 attaches a mark to the element determined to be important and reflects it in the XML-converted accumulated file (S106), and the abstract creating unit 64 applies it. Unnecessary elements are deleted to create a summary (S10).
8).

FIG. 7 shows a part of the original text of a storage file for which an abstract is to be created, and FIG. 8 simply shows that file as XML.
FIG. 9 shows the result of conversion, and the result of the importance determination is further included according to the XML grammar. In FIG. 7, in the center of the first line, the title is “A and B companies, tie-up in memory business”, and in the right end of the second line, the date is “200
1.12.01, "after the third line, the text" A Japanese computer giant A announced a tentative agreement with company B in the United States over a partnership in the memory business. "
・ ・. Is described.

FIG. 8 is a document that is simply XML-converted and its importance is not determined. Therefore, the attribute is "title".
Only three types of "date" and "text" are shown. In FIG. 9, the result of the determination by the importance determination unit 60 is reflected,
The element determined to be characteristic is tagged with "importance", and the degree of importance is described in three stages of "3, 2, 1" in descending order.

For example, focusing on the word "memory business" on the first line in FIG. 7, "3" having the highest importance in the importance determining section 60 based on the part of speech, the frequency of appearance, and the position of appearance of this word.
Then, the importance “3” is assigned to the word “memory business” by the mark assigning unit 62. In that case, X
As shown in the third line of FIG. 9 in the ML format file,
“<Importance level =“ 3 ”> Memory business </ importance>” ”and the tag indicating the attribute sandwiches the word“ memory business ”to reveal that the importance is“ 3 ”. here,
Descriptions such as element declarations and attribute declarations in the grammatical rules necessary for creating an XML file are omitted. By adding attributes such as the frequency of occurrence and the part of speech to the tag indicating the degree of importance, for example, “<importance level =“ 3 ”part of speech =“ noun ”appearance frequency =“ 10 ”> memory business <// importance>"

As shown in FIG. 9, after incorporating the degree of importance, a summary is created in accordance with the conditions set in the size determining unit 68. For example, assuming that the user has instructed that "30 characters or less", 29
In the text, the summary "Company A reaches a tentative agreement with Company B over the memory business alliance."
6 is stored in association with the storage file that is the basis of the file.

FIG. 10 shows an appearance frequency table showing the appearance frequencies of the words in the accumulation file shown in FIG. 7, which is held in the index storage unit and used in the search. The "name", "fix", and "verb" described in the column of part of speech indicate "general noun", "proper noun", and "verb", respectively.
"Name / verb" indicates that it is used for both a noun and a verb, such as "agree" and "agree".

Although FIG. 7 shows only a part of the accumulated file, it is shown that the word “memory business” appears ten times in this accumulated file as a whole. Also, as a “special note” item, a particularly important appearance position, for example, when it appears in the title, that fact is described. Although not shown, the index storage unit 44 holds a similar table in which appearance frequencies are described for other accumulated files managed by the file management server 120.

As described above, according to the embodiment, it is possible to create a highly accurate abstract by revealing the characteristic part of the file. In particular, by converting to an XML file, the attributes of each element in the file can be included in the file, and not only the summary creation but also the search function using those elements can be used.

The present invention has been described above based on the embodiments. It should be understood by those skilled in the art that this embodiment is an exemplification, and that various modifications can be made to the combinations of the respective constituent elements and the respective processing processes, and that such modifications are within the scope of the present invention. . An example of such a modification will be given.

In the embodiment, the storage file to be created as a summary and the created summary are held in the same device, but the present invention is not limited to this, and may be held in different devices. For example, as shown in FIG. 11, a database server 140 is provided separately from the file management server 120, and a file storage unit 42 is provided therein.

In the embodiment, the file is converted into the XML format file to create the summary file, but the present invention is not limited to this. The XML format file is very effective in realizing the present invention because it has a feature that the file can be divided into elements and the attributes of the elements can be flexibly described when the file is described. Further, the file including the tag including the attribute shown in FIG. 8 is effective in performing the file search under the condition such as "the file in which the word" memory business "is included in the" title "" is effective, and thus the file is retained. Good.

[0058]

According to the present invention, a large number of files can be managed by a highly convenient method.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing a configuration of a file search device in the base technology.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing a process of generating index data in the base technology.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing a search process in the base technology.

FIG. 4 is a functional block diagram showing an overall configuration of a search system according to this embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a functional block diagram showing a configuration of a file management server in this embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing a procedure for creating an abstract.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing a part of an original sentence of a storage file which is a target of summary creation.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing a storage file simply converted into an XML format.

FIG. 9 is a diagram showing an XML-format accumulation file including a determination result of importance.

FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a table showing appearance frequencies of elements in a file.

FIG. 11 is a functional block diagram showing an overall configuration of a search system in a modified example of this embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

20 processing unit, 22 analysis processing unit, 24 generation processing unit, 42 file storage unit, 44 index storage unit, 60 importance determination unit, 62 mark giving unit,
64 summary creation unit, 66 summary storage unit, 68 size determination unit, 100 update monitoring unit, 120 file management server.

Claims (11)

[Claims] 1. A device for managing a plurality of electronically recorded files that can be used by a computer, and a structure analysis unit for analyzing the structure of a file, and the result of the analysis indicates whether or not the structure is characteristic. If the structure of the file is determined to be characteristic by the importance determination unit that determines whether or not the structure of the file is characteristic, a mark indicating that the structure is characteristic is displayed in the file. A file management device comprising: a mark giving unit to be associated with. 2. A device for managing a plurality of electronically recorded files that can be used by a computer, and a structure analysis unit for decomposing the file into elements, and whether each of the decomposed elements is characteristic in the file. An importance determining unit that determines whether or not, to the element that is determined to be characteristic in the importance determining unit, a mark assigning unit that assigns a predetermined mark so that it becomes visible in the file, A file management device comprising: 3. The importance degree determination unit detects a position of the element that appears in the file, and refers to the position to determine whether or not the element is characteristic. File management device described in. 4. The importance level determination unit compares the frequency of appearance of the element in the file with the frequency of appearance in another file to determine whether or not the element is characteristic. 2. The method according to claim 2 or 3, wherein
File management device described in. 5. The file management device according to claim 1, further comprising an index storage unit that records, as an index, a combination of the mark-added object and the mark. 6. The index storage unit extracts an object determined to be characteristic by the importance degree determination unit, omits an object determined to be not characteristic, and compresses a file to create an index. The file management device according to claim 5, which is characterized in that: 7. The index storage unit determines the degree of compression when creating an index for the file according to the remaining storage capacity of a storage medium in which the created index is to be stored. The file management device according to claim 6. 8. The file management apparatus according to claim 6, wherein the index storage unit receives an instruction from a user regarding a degree of compression when creating an index of the file. 9. The method according to claim 5, further comprising an update checking unit that checks an update history of the file, and the index storage unit creates an index of the file again when the update of the file is confirmed. 8. The file management device according to any one of 8. 10. A program for managing a plurality of electronically recorded files that can be used by a computer, the step of analyzing the structure of a file, and the result of the analysis as to whether or not the structure is characteristic. A determining step, and when the importance degree determining section determines that the structure of the file is characteristic, a mark indicating that the structure is characteristic is indicated by a predetermined mark, and a mark giving section that associates it with the file. A computer program that causes a computer to execute. 11. A program for managing a plurality of electronically recorded files that can be used by a computer, the process of decomposing a file into elements, and whether or not each decomposed element is characteristic of the file. And a step of giving a predetermined mark to the element determined to be characteristic by the importance degree determination unit so that the element is manifested in the file. A characteristic computer program.